


Increments of Change

by tosca1390



Category: West Wing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-10
Updated: 2011-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-14 15:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In leaving the White House for good, Sam had this picture locked in his mind’s eyes, permanent and unchangeable. and As unreasonable as he knew it was, he didn’t seem why it had to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Increments of Change

**Author's Note:**

> Written for West Wing Secret Santa on LiveJournal.

*

In leaving the White House for good, Sam had this picture locked in his mind’s eyes, permanent and unchangeable. It was a montage made up of Leo in his office, Josh and Donna bickering in the halls, Toby hunched at his desk over his computer, the President jovial and fervent with Charlie tall at his side, and CJ presiding over the press with strength and charm. It was the family he’d left behind, and as unreasonable as he knew it was, he didn’t seem why they had to change.

He had changed, of course; sleeker glasses, a new haircut, a higher salary and a condo filled with floor to ceiling windows. Fundamentally he didn’t feel different, but the increments of change were small and he knew that as more time passed between phone calls to the D.C. Metro area, the more outside he felt when he did call.

Calling Toby was the worst. Sam had been naïve to think that the two of them would remain the same, but still—he hadn’t expected the passive-aggressive guilt to such an extreme. He picked up the phone one out of every four times Sam called, and the conversations were clipped and terse, even when talking about the twins.

Usually, Sam could take the hint; today was an exception. Something had happened to Leo.

“California doesn’t have twenty-four hour news channels anymore?” Toby asked in lieu of hello when he answered Sam’s fifth call in two days.

Across the continent, buried in paperwork, Sam frowned into the phone. “What happened?”

“He had a heart attack, Sam,” Toby said, his voice echoing fuzzily from the speakerphone in Sam’s home office.

Leo having a heart attack was unfathomable. Sam shook his head, rubbing his eyes under the lenses of his glasses. “Where? And how? Wasn’t Secret Service with him?”

“I don’t have a lot of time for this. We’re a little swamped, here.”

“Toby, come on.”

Toby exhaled slowly, and Sam settled back in his chair, watching the sun dip below the Hollywood hills and buildings. The sky turned purple-blue, streaked with orange, so unlike the sunsets in Washington.

“Leo hasn’t looked very well lately. It was just a matter of time, but the CODEL, Gaza, the peace talks—it didn’t help.” Toby paused; Sam could nearly see his face, his beard graying at the edges, his eyes sunken with a lack of rest. “He collapsed in the woods, Sam.”

“I can’t believe no one called me,” Sam murmured. “Why didn’t you call?”

“Forgive us for having a country to run,” Toby retorted flatly. “We’ve been short-staffed for a little while now.”

Guilt slipped between the words; Sam held his tongue, a sharp pang of regret curdling in his stomach. “Sorry.”

The line was silent for a moment, a host of unspoken words traveling across state lines. All Sam could think of was Leo, unflappable stubborn Leo, small and weak in a hospital bed, displaced from the job he’d sacrificed almost everything for, and it didn’t ring true. “When is he going back to work?” he asked finally.

“He’s not,” Toby said softly.

Startled, Sam’s mouth fell open. “Wow,” he said. “I can’t imagine Leo not being there.”

Toby sighed heavily. “CJ got the job.”

 _That_ was a surprise. “Over Josh?”

“I don’t think that’s how we’re spinning it. But yeah.”

Sam tapped the end of his pen against his desk. “She’ll be good.”

“Yes. She will be good.”

“And Josh…” Sam trailed off.

He could almost hear Toby shrug through the phone. “I think he’s just glad Leo and Donna are alive right now.”

“Of course,” Sam said quietly, letting silence fall between the lines once more.

He was fully up-to-date, other than the details of Leo’s heart attack. Josh had called him from the hospital in Ramstein and had just sounded _awful_ , while CJ had called during the first day of Camp David summit and spent a half-hour rambling on about Leo not going with the President and how weird everything was now. Even Will had rung him, unsure of how to balance his loyalty to the President he’d wanted to serve, and the Congressman-turned-Vice-President he had been ordered to work for.

Toby, though, had been silent for days, weeks, months now. Their phone calls were short and curt, and especially now, Sam didn’t know how to ask for a forgiveness he wasn’t sure he entirely deserved.

“You can’t only call and ask about us when the bad things are happening, Sam,” Toby said finally, voice low and deliberate. “You left, remember?”

Sam gritted his teeth. “I couldn’t come back.”

“Shut up, Sam—“

“I _couldn’t_ , Toby! I’d lost, and Will fit, and it was time to move on,” Sam interjected shortly.

“Will fit, but it wasn’t the same. It _isn’t_ the same. We needed you. And now we’re stuck again,” Toby retorted.

Sam glared at the phone, holding his pen tightly in his fingers. “Well I’m sorry, Toby, but it’s done. And I’m tired of trying to get you to forgive me.”

“I’m not—“ Toby cursed under his breath. “Jesus, Sam, you quit!”

“I was there,” Sam said curtly.

“Why?”

He didn’t want to have this conversation on speaker phone; he didn’t want to have it at _all_ , and especially not now, with Leo and Donna and—

“Sam.”

Sam picked up the receiver and pressed the speaker phone button, bringing Toby to his ear (where some form of Toby always was nowadays, right at his shoulder). “It was time for me to go, Toby. I was burnt out. I would have been useless to you after Orange County, and Will—he was the next best thing.”

Toby was silent for a moment, his breathing even and deep in Sam’s ear. “He was your parting gift?”

“No—maybe—it doesn’t matter now,” Sam muttered, running a hand through his hair.

“You could have taken time. A break. You could come back right now, and we’d have you back!” Toby retorted, voice rising at the end.

“I couldn’t come back. Not then,” Sam said evenly. “Not now. I’m sorry, but I was done. And I wasn’t going to half-ass it with the President, or Leo, or you. Especially you, Toby.”

The phone lay quiet. Sam stretched in his chair, tapping his pen against his desk. “Looking for a dictionary?” he asked finally.

“The twins like the mobile you sent. The planes, the clouds—they fall asleep to them every night,” Toby said abruptly. “It hangs over the crib.”

It was the first time Toby had mentioned the gift; Andy had called, sent a thank you card, but Sam figured that Toby had been too wrapped up in his anger and resentment to be thankful. Sam swallowed hard, and breathed easily for the first time in a long while.

“I’m glad,” he said after a moment.

Toby cleared his throat. “Listen, I’ve—“

“Sure, sure,” Sam said quietly, looking out the window, into the deepening darkness. Sometimes he forgot about the difference in time zones, but he never forgot the difference in speed. His life was much slower, now that he didn’t work at the White House, and Toby was in the middle of a marathon-long sprint. “Talk to you soon.”

“Sure,” Toby murmured before hanging up. Sam set the phone down in its cradle and looked back down at the depositions littering his desk, the weight on his shoulders just a little lighter.

*


End file.
